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Comment by Walterion

From this expansion onwards, the Eternal Belt Buckle can be only applied on belts with itemlevel lower than 300. This belt can be applied on all the other belts.

What makes me wonder is that it sets the cap to 500... which means that the last tier of armor would be around the 450s in itemlevel.

Comment by fraeda

They add a gem slot to your belt.

Comment by Nepturion

This Ebonsteel Belt Buckle isnt great, they should have done better.Blizzard should have tweaked this abit, 1 more slot or if you socketing gloves and wrist you you get a socket bonus..

Comment by Dima25

What type of a socket it adds?

Comment by Juyo

In view of it's increased material cost and relative "power", this should have some additional effect instead of just being "v2.0" in my opinion - poor design choice by Blizz to just go "Ah we'll just bump it up to 85 gear/mats and keep it the same." - An additional socket, or the inclusion of some amount of Mastery rating (for omni-class-usefulness) would have been much more sensible.

Comment by imjc

Is this compatible with Engeneering Nitro Boosts?

Comment by Bozanimal

I'm not sure these are really "inflated" material costs relative to other Cataclysm items.

The WotLK equivalent was the Eternal Belt Buckle:

4 Saronite Bars (8 Saronite Ore)

1 Eternal Earth (10 Crystallized Earth)

1 Eternal Water (10 Crystallized Water)

1 Eternal Shadow (10 Crystallized Shadow)

The Ebonsteel Belt Buckle is:

4 Volatile Earth

4 Elementium Bar (8 Elementium Ore)

4 Pyrium Bar (8 Pyrite Ore)

If Blizzard had just ported its model for the Eternal Buckle to Cataclysm, you'd have:

4 Elementium Bar (8 Elementium Ore)

10 Volatile Earth

10 Volatile Water

10 Volatile (something, as Shadow is gone)

So in theory we've equated 26 Volatiles with 8 Pyrite Ore, the Cataclysm equivalent of Titanium Ore. From a cost perspective if you add up the cost of those Volatiles, at least as of the current patch, they are about equivalent on my server. Your mileage may vary.

Comment by Anathelia

If anything, Sinestra's item level would be an indication of the next tier level, not a stepping stone in between. Consider:

Heroics were 200, while Naxx 25 was 213. However, Katie dropped 226, which was Uld 25's tier level. Soggy Yoggy dropped 226 - but Algalon was the last boss, who dropped 239. ToC was the same, but LK dropped higher than the rest of ICC on both sizes as well.

Thus, Sinestra's own items can't really be counted for determining what the next tier level is going to be.

If anything, what they've learned from scaling in Wrath means we can't expect the same scaling of item level, and so any guesses at this point are relatively uneducated. Consider 10 man progression in Wrath.

There was no particular model it followed, except that typically 25 man was 13 above 10 man. Uld screwed that up, of course, because it was only 6 above the 10 man level. Since 10 and 25 drop the SAME items in Cata, we can expect that the already seen trend of 13 item level is the pattern that will be followed:

Normal: 333Heroic: 346T11: 359T11 Hard/T12: 372T12 Hard/T13: 385

But then, what would be the point of doing the T12 on normal if your guild has cleared it on heroic by the time it's released? Sure, you'll learn the fights, but you won't be seeing any upgrades. So logically, T12 should have a higher item level than the T11 heroics. Maybe it will be a jump of 19 between tiers after raids start:

Again, this is all conjecture, and the existing tier setup is 13 between levels, rather than 19... so it's no better than any other guess. There's also the fact that the buckle doesn't allow above level 500, which is a pretty significant disparity - the wrath buckle doesn't go above 300, with Cata items starting at about 270 and the new gems requiring 285+; there's not much space there, as compared to the 90 item level difference between the possible end of the Cata tiers and where the buckle stops.

So who knows, really?

Comment by BioChem

Will this add another Gem slot to a belt that already has a gem slot

Comment by Bjurran

Beginner questionIf I buy this belt buckle and attach it to my belt, will I need to get a new one when I get a better belt or will I keep the buckle?

Comment by mmomeltingpot

Remember when creating these that Pyrite Ore tends to be a lot cheaper than Pyrium Bars - damn you, Blizz, for changing the name when you heat it!

Comment by Arfan

Don't make the mistake of socketing a prismatic gem in the Ebonsteel belt buckle - it will take any colour of gems. Use the red, blue or yellow gem that benefits you the most.

Comment by Bastwiest

Good money maker, everybody needs 'm alot as they upgrade.The mats are pretty cheap, if you're a BS i quess you also have smelting so;

Offcorse you can allways farm the mats you're self and even get more gold out of it.

Most of the time i sell all 5 in one day.

Comment by imbam4g3

As of patch 5.0.4, according to the tooltip the maximum item level has been lowered from 500 down to 375.However it is only the tooltip that has changed: Ebonsteel Belt Buckle is still usable on all Cataclysm belts. I just used it succesfully on my ilvl 397 Tentacular Belt.

As a nice side-effect, the now misleading tooltip has caused the price in AH to go down about 50% on my realm :)

Thanks for the correction to my inital post Cadenbrie & Thestool :)

Comment by Thestool

Patch 5.0.4

Currently this says you cannot put it on items above a 375 ilvl... That is not correct, you can currently put it on a belt higher than a 375 item level... I just put it on my belt i just obtained.